In
the mid-1960s, Helen Gurley Brown created Cosmopolitan
magazine and thus created the Cosmo Girl, an 18-34 year old female reader and
purveyor of the sexual revolution, freed sexually and liberated them from class
and gender roles prominent in the day. Brown was interested in not only
sexually liberating young women and addressing the double standard placed on
women and sex, but also wanted to create women who could self-manage themselves
and be better more equal members of society.
Brown
started her journey with her bestseller Sex
and the Single Girl in 1962 and became an overnight celebrity. The book was
for women of all backgrounds and had advice on personal appearance, housing,
working, and most importantly, flirting. Brown's book taught young women how to
woo men, have affairs, attract the best of the best, and get the men to buy
them and take care of them like queens. She discussed birth control, mandatory motherhood,
divorce, work outside the home, and financial and general independence. This
book was revolutionary during this time as sexual promiscuity was frowned upon
and women were only allowed to be sexual beings while married where women were
often reliant on their husbands. Due to the success of Sex and the Single Girl Brown wrote many sequels and advice
columns, but the most important thing the book led to was her creation of Cosmopolitan.
Cosmopolitan was a magazine that
provided emotional, business, and social advice for young women to have a
better life, in addition to advertising traditionally feminine consumer goods
and fashion and ads for places that allowed women to pursue jobs outside the
home. Brown's advice and Cosmo as a
whole provided advice for women during the transitional time of men as solely
bread winners to a combination of men and women as breadwinners and their
changing roles in society. Over the years, the image of the Cosmo Girl became a
sexualized symbol of femininity. The
creation of Ms. magazine in 1972
provided competition for Cosmopolitan and
took some of its readers, altering the face of the Cosmo Girl to a sexualized
object and high powered executive at the same time. These commercial women's
magazines provided women with an idealized image of themselves, but that
idealized image was rooted in male expectations of femininity.
Cosmo promised all girls the
luxurious lifestyle of celebrities and the models in their magazine, but only
if they followed their rules and bought the necessary clothes, makeup,
accessories, and whatnot. The problem with this was that it led women to
constantly recreating themselves to fit the societal trends, and never fully
finding themselves. Fakeness and "lying" about beauty, taping breasts
to look better and usage of wigs and fake nails, became celebrated. The average
Cosmo Girl was a white heterosexual upper-middle class woman, with other
minorities being pretty much ignored. The Cosmo Girl could accomplish the girl-style
American Dream and pink-collar labor and
in turn have increased class position and economic capital to use it in the
dating and marriage game. The advice in Cosmo to these pink-collar workers,
women who worked as secretaries and office
positions, attracted men with more education, money, and resources by
appropriating cultural signifiers of class as shown in Cosmo.
The
most important thing Cosmo has done
was place its emphasis on female sexuality, with features on ways to increase
libido, orgasms, casual sex, masturbation, and other topics that are still
taboo today. These articles and the quizzes that go along with them are helped
pave the way for the sexual revolution, leading to some of the most sexually experienced
group of women in western history.
Cosmo paved the way for
women's sexual freedom and gratification in addition to preaching independence
and empowerment to women.
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